So, we had explored a bit in the previous conference that fundamental dialectic between community and solitude, and we'd seen that it's, first of all, very much there in Scripture, and then it plays itself out down through the monastic decades and centuries, and you can really do a history of monasticism just in terms of how each monastic community relates those two. And we saw that in the rule, Benedict doesn't firm up one particular pattern, but allows for a free interplay, and then allows every community and every monk to work it out according to the spirit in that particular moment. Personal sharing is very big these days, and so I thought I'd share how we commandolese work it out, and I think it is unique, and does distinguish us as the best of the congregations. But we do have, thank you, we do have the full range from the rural hermitage that wants

[01:11]

very explicitly to underline solitude, and then we have the rural monastery, or synobium, and that in the rural setting wants to give space to community, and then from the very beginning of our heritage, we have the urban community, urban synobium. So there's that full range, and also within the hermitage, we usually start with giving more space to community for our young monks in formation, but then as one journeys on, some will be drawn into more and more solitude, and that's possible. And the final stage can be temporary reclusion, or indeed permanent reclusion, when one just stays in one's individual cottage or cell. The architecture of our hermitage up at Big Sur, for instance, expresses this dialectic there. Each monk has his own individual cottage, so it's like a little Christian village.

[02:14]

And that's unique. That was Romuold's great revolution, because the rule says explicitly the monks are to live in a common dorm, not even to have an individual room, but Romuold says that's very all good and well for the rule, and though we follow the rule, we modify that and say no, every monk is to have not only his own room, but his own cottage. This goes back to the first forms of monasticism in the desert, with the desert hermits. Well, I think they had both, that is, some lived in caves and some lived in little huts that they would construct, both and. So, all this wants to be an outer and visible sign for all of us. How do we make space for all of this? We found this wise to have the full range, because in a lifetime, and we live longer

[03:19]

these days, in a lifetime, in a certain period of one's life, the hermitage might be better for a certain phase, and that's where one really flourishes. But we don't want necessarily to lock one into that for the rest of his or her life, and so there might be a period when one's drawn then to more community, or vice versa, more urban community, etc. So the architectural structure and the different houses in quite different locations with different configurations, want to honor this whole range of possibilities in the interplay of solitude and community. We have this little rule of thumb that only the person who can serenely live his or her solitude can live well community. If you're terrified of your inner solitude and are just always with people because it's a flight, that's not going to be a real community you're living. And the opposite is the case.

[04:21]

Only those who serenely and happily can live community can serenely and well live solitude. That's a way of discerning if someone asks for reclusion, that they're just trying to get away from the problems of community. That isn't the time to give more solitude, but the time to engage in a healthier way in community. And again, I think this is the case for any community, any family, any person. So two teachings of our Lord, two exhortations that then are there throughout the monastic years, and in a certain sense, I think, characterize the monastic charism in a particular way, as every other Christian charism, are contrition and love. You remember right there at the beginning, at the very beginning of our Lord's earthly ministry, what does he preach? Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.

[05:24]

This is Mark 1, so this is right there at the beginning. And this is just a direct echo of John the Baptist's message, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. So biblical scholars say this is one strong indication how emphatically Jesus was influenced by John the Baptist. And if you take John as some kind of proto-monastic figure, remember that John was in the shadow of Qumran, and this is very much a Qumran message. We have our Lord's fundamental, first-off message as a monastic message, and we want to take very seriously that exhortation to repent, metanoeke. Basically the Greek means turn direction, turn around 180 degrees, and go back in quite a different direction. So it's the basic biblical image of journeying, but instead of journeying away from the covenant

[06:25]

and its requirements, a journeying away from the Lord, turn around and go back. This isn't very big for us in these decades of self-affirmation and self-esteem, and I'm okay, you're okay. This seems like a put-down, like masochism, etc., but I think at its best it's just truth, it's just reality. Some of those deep and heavy issues we were exploring last night, there is evil in the world, that's just the way it is, tragically, and it's not just over there with that person, with Hitler or Stalin or whoever it be over there, but it is in my heart, if I'm looking at all, closer at the situation, and it's not just put in me that I have to unfortunately repeat as a victim until I free myself up through some therapy workshop or something,

[07:28]

the evil in my heart is not just insofar as I'm a victim of mommy or daddy. There's some powerful protests in these years against pop psychology at its worst, which makes us just a nation of victims, we're all victimized by mommy and daddy and our older brother and certainly our older sister, but it can't be just that, it has to be I in my freedom, as we were saying last night, we accept that fundamental tenet of the prophets of Jesus, that we are responsible for the things we do, the things we don't do. I think in all of our traditions, we start out liturgies with some kind of acknowledgment of this, some kind of confession of sin. The one in the prayer book I think is particularly eloquent, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, in word and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left

[08:31]

undone. The famous prayers of omission, if we can't come up with any prayers of commission, we have not loved you with our whole heart, we have not loved our neighbors and ourselves. Interestingly, it neatly focuses on our Lord's two-fold command as the basic criterion for correct living of the Lord, and saying, we just don't measure up. It's a light yoke, but it's in another way a very demanding yoke, and we don't measure up. To acknowledge that is the beginning step, if we don't acknowledge that, we're in trouble. That's why the Pharisees, who were extremely sincere, extremely rigorous religious folk, weren't there in that moment, because it wasn't possible for them to repent, to experience that compunction, that contrition. So there's a whole wonderful exploration of the monastic charism that's simply titled penthos, which is the Greek for contrition, for repentance, for grieving, for humility,

[09:38]

for now a turning back and heading in obedience back to where we've come, where we've wandered from through disobedience. That's where at the very beginning, remember, of the prologue, Benedict starts out. He himself calls his monks to repentance, in that biblical sense of a turning around and a heading entirely different direction, that by the labor of obedience you may return to him from whom you had departed by the slope of disobedience. So it's a very biblical image, it's straight out of the parable of the prodigal son, who through disobedience distances himself from the father, and then in that moment of insight and repentance, he gets up and he returns. And biblical scholars say that that wonderful parable sums up the whole gospel. It's all about humanity, and in some mysterious way the prodigal son is Jesus, who in that

[10:44]

wonderful hymn of Philippians empties himself and distances himself from the father's house, now for our sake, makes himself sin, and then with the suffering and the death and the resurrection returns to the father's house and allows us all to journey with him. What does he find as he approaches the father's house? He finds this attentive love, this expectation in compassion, in mercy, in pardon. So that's the whole monastic thing. So the first exhortation is to repent for a very precise reason, this eschatological moment. And the second is of love, the twofold command to love, love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength. This simply because having repented, having received this free gift of pardoning love, then just spread it around with all the parables in that regard.

[11:45]

How can you, who have received so much pardon, compassion, mercy, not show it to the others who have as much need from God and from you? So St. Benedict, having exhorted us to return to the father, then the basic thing to do is to fulfill our Lord's twofold command. In that wonderful chapter four, he sets up a workshop for the monk and sets out basic tools. And he prioritizes these tools, and the first one, in the first place, to love the Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole soul, mind, strength, and then to love your neighbor as yourself. This is the basic task of the monk. So in the course of the rule, there's all kinds of other things the monk has to do, but this is the task within every other task. This is the heart of the matter of any particular job. And if we're not doing this well, as St. Paul says very emphatically in 1 Corinthians 13,

[12:48]

all of the other stuff is just vanity in show, whether we're beating ourselves well or singing the canticles marvelously or setting up the refectory well or whatever. If this isn't the heart of the matter, we failed as monks. So these two things, these two dispositions of heart, these two virtues, these two activities that are, again, simply participation in the life of Christ, who himself in humility now loves us, loves the Father with his whole heart, mind, soul, and strength. There is for the monk always the Christological reading of every text of Scripture, also of every exhortation of Christ. Whatever Christ tells us to do, that's not just arbitrary moralism, like the mother superior who says, well, do this, you do that, that kind of thing.

[13:49]

But it comes out of a whole experience of the divine life that Christ has. This is what Trinity is all about. So he shares with us what he is doing, what his ministry is all about, what the Paschal ministry is all about. So greater love has no one than this to lay down one's life for one's friends. So Christ is the great lover, Christ is the bridegroom, Christ is the loving friend. So what we're to do now is simply to love, to live this contrite love. A great patron saint for all of this is the great feminine figure in the New Testament, Mary Magdalene, or any of those women who anointed Christ with oil, with their tears. Jack referred to this. This is the concrete outer series of signs that express that contrite love, which is

[14:53]

the heart of the monastic charism. These two verbs, repent and love, also have two wonderful substantives, repentance and love. And so we are meant to be substantive, we are meant to be verb, we are meant to be and to do, in this wonderful theological debate, whether it's mainly a doing that constitutes the Christian life, or a being. And I think the Benedictine approach is it's both and, and we need to go back to the substance of the matter and be there, and then that wants to bear fruit in doing this, be doers of the word and not hearers only. So all of this is simply in response for the rule, what can be sweeter to us dear brethren than this voice of the Lord inviting us, it's all vocation, it's all call, behold in his

[15:58]

loving kindness, the Lord shows us the way of life. It comes out of this loving kindness, we've strayed, we've gotten off the road in that wonderful image of sheep straying, but the Lord calls us back and the sheep know the voice of the shepherd, and that's, we perceive the love there, and so then we can love. So ours is a journey back to the Father, and it's very laborious, back to the loving Mother also in all those important passages of the Old Testament that we're now recovering. And so we journey, and it's often a heavy journey, but it becomes lighter hopefully, and at the end we're running the whole measure of our advancement in the Christian life and the monastic life is this journey. For as we advance in the religious life, says Saint Benedict in the same prologue, and in

[16:59]

faith, our hearts expand and we come to run the way of God's commandments with the unspeakable sweetness of love. So this is the heart of the matter. Here it's become not heavy exhortation to perfection, it's also that, but it's this wonderful sweetness of love, because love is also this. So we're called simply to abide in God's love, and to journey at the same time, you'll see that, that's the dialectic of stability and conversion of life, conversatio morum. Benedict brings all this together in a lovely exhortation, prefer nothing to the love of Christ, prefer nothing to the love of Christ. That love of Christ, is that the subjective genitive, is that the love which Christ shows to us and pours out and heals us with, or is that our loving of Christ, is it the objective

[18:04]

gender? Well, it's both, and it starts out with that receiving of the love because the Lord first loved us, but then it's responding, and we prefer nothing to this. So Benedict very much wants us to prioritize, and if we put this first, we're all right. The suggestion is that in fact we very often put other things first, maybe like 98% of the time or something, but to turn around again and to return through petition, through repentance, compunction, humility, obedience, that whole cluster of sentiments and virtues in the Lord, to then love, to then show mercy, compassion, tenderness, that whole cluster of ways of being and living, and all this in Christ. And so also our Lord's two-fold command is brought together in this blessed simplicity,

[19:05]

to love the Lord our God with all our heart. Well, when we love Christ, we have a full Chalcedonian Christology, as we certainly all do, though we didn't know the creed that other day in liturgy, but we have that creed of faith. We know that Christ is God of God, Light of Light, so in loving Christ, in loving also the suffering servant, in his anguish and suffering, we are loving God. And so we are loving the suffering in God through the suffering servant. But Christ is also Son of Man, Christ is the new Adam, and in loving Christ we love all of humanity, and this not just in some kind of pious, sentimental, easy way out, but as we heard in today's Gospel, Matthew 25, this is also injunction, this is also not just in sentiment and emotion, but whenever we see the hungry or the naked or the sick, we

[20:09]

see Christ, and thus to love them in word and deed, and not just in sentiment or in profession. So, this kind of is, again, the task within every task, and it's the motive for everything. If now we look at the structure of the rule, why did Benedict structure that? Well, that way, ultimately, somehow out of contrite love. Then we look at the structure of the day, why that structure, why that amount of time to Lectio, why that amount of time to worship, why that balance and that rhythm, out of contrite love. So, hopefully, whatever we do will come out of that heart of the matter. It's like, again, vectors that permit us to locate the center of it all, and then we are on target. The great monk, Cassian, said, you've always got to know where you're going, and what is your ultimate goal, and what is your immediate

[21:13]

goal. If you know that, then at every moment you can discern, well, am I off the track, or am I? Well, he has various ways of summing up what is the immediate goal and what is the ultimate. But his ultimate way is it's simply caritas pura, it's pure charity. That's why we do any immediate thing, like listen to this conference, or reflect on it, or whatever, and that's our ultimate goal. The fullness is the great marriage feast, which is the kingdom. So, this is a way of bringing it all together in that blessed simplicity. So, the structure of the rule. At the time of the rule of St. Benedict, the mid-6th century, there were about two dozen other rules floating around, and it wasn't at all as if the rule of Benedict immediately imposed itself. And it's interesting to get in touch with some of these other rules. That famous rule of the master is almost at the same time. Now, some

[22:17]

of these rules focus almost entirely on just particular regulations, and decrees, and specifications. Others are very theological. Others do a certain mixture of the two. Well, the rule of St. Benedict wants both, both and. And all this, again, is solicitation to us, if we want to think, what about my own rule of life? Is there one there? Very often there is one, at least implicitly. But bring it out and explore it, and see if it might want a few amendments or revampings. Well, what Benedict proposes is a rule that has basic theological biblical principles as the foundation, and then on those big solid building blocks has smaller stones, which are the fundamental elements specifically of the monastic, and then on that, the smaller stones still of the particular dispositions that he proposes.

[23:21]

So it's a very articulated rule. It isn't that he, as in some of the other rules, confuses the huge basic things for which we should be willing to die with the little particular proposals of which we should be immediately willing to set aside, or indeed judge as not healthy, not good. Benedict is regularly exhorting us to beat the children in the community. That wouldn't be our approach today. He has a model of authority that's very patriarchal, and would just be inevitable in that time of the late Roman Empire, which was very emphatically patriarchal, where the father of the family had the power of life and death over wife and over kids, and certainly over slaves. That was just the way you saw things. Well, that doesn't necessarily mean that's the way we have to see things today, whether in the

[24:25]

parish or family or within, if we have to capitulate so fully to the superego or something if we want to carry on a dialogue with the psychological. So there are some things that are absolutely reprehensible in the rule, as that wonderful document of renewal of the English Benedictines, consider your call notes. There are other things that will stand for all eternity and for which we should be willing to die. So the structure is even there in the way it's laid out. And first of all, there's the prologue, and that is substantial, that is foundational. And biblical scholars feel that that's very likely simply a baptismal catechesis that Benedict took over and put at the beginning of it all. This is the thesis that the great David gave. And this is wonderful, because everyone here is vowed, we are vowed

[25:27]

by our baptismal vows. And so the rule begins just with these baptismal vows and their implications spelled out in very biblical imagery and archetypes of basically listening to the word of God, rising up, journeying with Christ, journeying back to the kingdom in the spirit. It's very dynamic, it's very paschal, it's very Trinitarian, Christocentric. For this we should be willing to die. And so if you want to read the rule, it doesn't mean you have to read every chapter with the same attention and the same concern. Certainly read the prologue very slowly and very carefully, and all that should be able to be interiorized and claimed personally in one way or another. So, first of all we have the prologue. Then we have a long, well, section

[26:27]

that includes the general monastic principles, chapter one to seven, basic things like the kind of monks, the qualities of the abbot, summoning the brethren to chapter, holy obedience. These are the large stones on top of the huge foundational stones, and that is specifically monastic then, but specifically monastic more or less for any Benedictine community. And then you get into more particular prescriptions, and as Benedict regularly indicates there, there may be adaptation according to the season, according to the condition, the health of the monk, whatever. Legislation in the stricter sense, deans, sellers, the measure of food, chapter eight through seventy-one. And that's interesting and it's important, and it should not likely be tossed out by monks, though it might be fairly quickly, many parts set

[27:29]

aside by people living the baptismal vows. But then you get the final section of the culmination with this wonderful ode to fraternal charity, which is chapter seventy-two, and that should be looked at very carefully. It seems to me it is the basic shape that our parish should have, that our Christian family should have, that we should have inside in terms of that inner village of personalities and sub-personalities within and relating within the inner monastery. So chapter seventy-two wants to be looked at very carefully. For that also, we should be prepared to die. And then seventy-three, this marvelous explosion of freedom, right in the spirit of Jack's conference this morning, saying this is a small rule for beginners. Start here, observe this, and then if at the appropriate time

[28:31]

you're called to go beyond, well then go beyond. It's a wonderful act of humility by the writer of the rule, who so exhorts us to kneel in humility. Some later founders presume to set up the definitive rule, where it's all set out, and you never get beyond this framework. If you do, you're in trouble. And St. Benedict says, no, please get beyond this rule. Please grow beyond it, in the spirit, not through pride or arrogance, and when that comes, just soar. And what then will be our rule? He says, any sentence of the divine scriptures becomes rule. The person spirit-filled, the pneumaticus, the person then who's living no longer according to the flesh, in the great Pauline opposition, but according to the spirit, which as we know doesn't mean the body, but means the whole person, moving down towards also external

[29:36]

right, towards prescriptions such as circumcision. Apparently that's what Paul meant by fixation on the flesh. He didn't mean sex pots and dirty thoughts and things. He meant these Pharisees who thought they were so justified by outer conformity to prescriptions of the law. That's living according to the flesh. But to live according to the spirit is according to the freedom of the children of God, and that's chapter 73. So again, it's a very articulated rule, and so for that reason it's purdured, and for that reason men and women vow their life according to this rule, even now, thousands in the Roman Catholic Church, in the Anglican Communion, Lutherans, because there is that articulation. We're not vowing that we will sleep in a dormitory and there'll be a candle lit all night and we won't sleep with our swords or we might hurt ourselves. That's in the rule, but that's

[30:39]

not normative, the way of hear the word of the God, rise up in Christ, journey in humility, grow in humility, run in love, those perennial components of the rule. So again the challenge to us, to journey into this heart of the rule and let it challenge us, well what is my rule of life, and what am I going to do about that? There's another way you can look at Benedict's way of ordering monastic life, and that's just to look very concretely at each typical day, what is its shape. And that again, not just for information, so we'll know, but as challenge, what does my average day look like and why? Benedict will say his average day looks like that out of, again, a motive of repentant love. What is behind the way we divvy up the time in our day? Time, it's a

[31:53]

great resource, it's a great mystery. I read a special about Americans in this decade are more and more obsessed with time, there just isn't enough. Money isn't so much even a big problem often, it's time. I just read a thing about Japanese, some 10,000 Japanese work themselves to death every year because there's not enough time. You've got to go faster and faster and faster to keep up with the competition, and then they just collapse and they're starting to introduce these lawsuits, the wives and the kids, the company, you killed my husband by requiring him to just work in this crazy way. So time is a resource, we have less and less of it, or do we? If you want to get thoroughly philosophical, there's always 24 hours to a day, there's always however many thousands of minutes that works out. It's there, it's just that for some reason we feel compelled to give larger and larger blocks of that time

[32:58]

to work, and we need to look very rigorously at what is behind that compulsion. Is it contrite love? Is that our deepest motive? Or is it fear? Or is it greed? Or is it pride? Or what is it? But that's the basic question. So we have time, we are in time. Augustine says time is the most obvious thing there is, until you try to say what it is. He says in the Confessions that I say, I have no idea what it is. When I start to ponder it, it's one of those real mysteries, this very precious resource that God gives to us. One can just philosophically say it's the measure of motion, the way feet and inches measure extension, so hours and minutes and seconds measure motion from here to there, that's one. But it seems to be related to some very deeper realities than that. And it's marvelous, I think, just

[34:04]

to see how the Lord, God the Creator, gave us as our basic timepiece the heavens, the cosmos, and the earth spinning on its axis is our basic measure of time. That's, I think, marvelously lyrical. And then the moon in its gyrations gives us that other measure of the month, and then spinning around the earth gives us the year. So it's this marvelous cosmic timepiece that wants to suggest to us some larger perspective on this wonderful resource of time. Time is our human condition. We can't get out of time except through moments of real grace and ecstasy, but then even the body continues to be in time, and that means for the kid just wonderful opportunities. But then we see time starting to run out

[35:04]

on us, and then it would seem we have to run faster and faster and faster and faster, but to reflect on this amazing dimension of the human condition of time. And then our main challenge is to hallow time. This, I think, is what the rule does. And do we do it? Do we hallow our time? That's the fundamental goal of a rule of life, to hallow our time so that it does become like incense in the Lord's sight. In Scripture, biblical scholars say there tend to be two quite different ways of talking about time. This isn't always very consistently there, but it's a tendency to talk on the one hand about chronos time, which is kind of time outside of the disposition of God, just secular time, one damn thing after another time, I'm in control time, or the emperor

[36:07]

is in control, or just fate is in control, one damn thing after another, fatalistic time. But then there's kairos, there's salvation event, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, it's here, this is the moment. And this kairos time is this instant. Every instant is full of the possibility of repentance, returning to the Father, communion with God, communion in love with everyone. So every instant is fecund with the kingdom. And every instant is seen in this salvation history where the Lord is working out his, her plans. So it's a quite different perspective on time. And Benedict wants to offer a mediation, a concrete way of getting back to kairos, to getting back to salvation time. So right there again

[37:12]

at the beginning of the prologue, one can hear this wanting to get us back to this perspective. Let us arise then, at last, we've been losing time, for the scripture stirs us up saying, now is the hour for us to rise from sleep. Let us open our eyes to the deifying light, let us hear with attentive ears the warning which the divine voice cries daily to us. This is a now only, but there's also this mysterious repetition, fidelity, a continuing invitation. Today, if you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. He who has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying now to the churches. So this is this urgent cry of John the Baptist, of our Lord, of the whole prophetic tradition, wake up to this decisive moment. And that's what the rule is asking us to do. And so the rule shapes a day that wants to respect

[38:17]

kairos time, and again come out of this contrite love, basic motive. And so scholars say it breaks down more or less to this, that the monk in the time of Benedict, and lots of monks still today, and lots of people living in the world, give something like three and a half hours a day to worship, that's the divine office, that's vigils and prime and lauds and sextenone, however you want to divide it up. It's quite a chunk every day to worship of God. And St. Benedict who says let nothing be preferred to the love of Christ, also says let nothing be preferred to the work of God, the opus Dei, the divine liturgy. So this has a primacy in the Benedictine life, and again we want to ask, is it their primary, do I get up in the morning primarily to worship God? And if I do, how is that spelled out

[39:20]

in the time I give over to that? Do I give it enough time, if I say that's first, and then I give it a little tiny fraction of time, how is that? And it could be that I don't have choices. If I've got seven kids that I've got to support, and I can only earn enough to do that by working ten, twelve hours a day, and that's the common lot of most of humanity, then we can't lyricize too much about well, did you say vigils, and did you say lauds, etc. But I think at least we want to hear something of the prophetic challenge of that component of the day. Then I think this is surprising, four and a half hours to spiritual reading, to Lectio, which is primarily a reading of scripture, but also of the early Christian classics of the fathers and the mothers and the monastic classics, but very substantial spiritual reading. The monks would say inevitably we're going to feed

[40:27]

our face three times a day, come rain or shine. We know that the body needs nourishment. Doesn't the mind and the spirit need nourishment? Very often we're anorexic at that level. We just give nothing of solid nourishment, or we eat junk food, if you want to continue the latest kind of pop stuff, instead of the substantial nourishment that will nourish us for a lifetime. So, four and a half hours for Lectio, for spiritual reading. Then about one hour for meals, for feeding the body, and Benedict insists that there be enough food, and there be different dishes, and there be a warm dish in the winter, etc. So he's very, very incarnational, very in favor of a solid acknowledging of the needs of the body there. I was driving up here with a wonderful Franciscan who had been provincial for years, and he mentioned

[41:30]

how St. Francis, at the end of his life, had to apologize for the way he had abused his brother body. He had gotten to almost a Manichean thing of punishing the flesh, and he had ruined his own health. And this isn't the Benedictine way. And this is a real revolution that Benedict pulls off, because the desert tradition was very big into ascetical calisthenics, and I'm fasting more than you're fasting, and I'm eating less than you're eating, kind of thing. And Benedict says, no, this is the food that, and this is the amount of time it's going to be. It's not hours. It's not like the late Roman banquet that would last seven or eight hours, but it's sufficient. And then this is a real surprise in the context of the desert, eight and a half hours for sleep. Oh, I'm sorry, eight hours for sleep. So there were the sleepless ones in the desert who were taking very literally the exhortation

[42:32]

of Jesus to always watch, always be alert. They were going to prop themselves against the rocks and pride themselves as never sleeping. And Benedict says, nonsense. You go to bed and you sleep. And then seven hours of work, and this was mainly manual labor, but not just. And as I hope we have time to see, Benedict puts a very positive importance to work in counter-distinction to the late Roman Empire, where work was seen as something very demeaning for the slave class. And some historians say that Benedict and the Benedictines saved Western civilization by ennobling work, the work of agriculture, the work of culture. And so this is still part of our heritage, though it might have gotten a little wobbly when we get into the work ethic that just takes this. So the monk is supposed to work seven hours, but

[43:33]

in this context, and as we'll see in this pattern of work interspersed with prayer, so it's not just an obsessive, intense work that absorbs every cell of energy I have. But it's work interspersed with rest, with eating, and with primarily worship. So, why don't we think about this dividing up of the day, and we'll come back to this and look at it a bit more, how it wants to represent also a balance and a rhythm, and challenge us very much on how we are cutting the pie of our own kairos time, or chronos time every day. Amen. Let's take a break.

[44:31]

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